Smashing!
The first handheld entry in the series is one of it’s biggest and brightest yet!
Masahiro Sakurai and Namco Bandai deliver a fantastic game on Nintendo’s handheld. With a massive character roster that’ll take you through an All-Star cast, sharp and beautiful graphics and gameplay that should fulfill newcommers and long-time fans’ expectations alike.
Modes
The first mode in this game is “Smash” which is a free match, weather you choose to play alone against AI characters, or locally on a group with your friends, this mode is perfect to get you into the game and understand the basic concepts of this game before getting into the other modes. It’s important to note a new feature, in which all stages have an “Omega mode” which basically turns them into a Final Destination clone, making the stage into one big platform.
The game sees the return of Classic mode, where you are put in a number of themed battles until you reach the end and get the trophy of the character you selected, it isn’t too different from the past iterations, the main difference is that now you can choose from 2 or 3 alternatives of equivalent fights instead of being put right into one, making it feel much more like a personalized experience, another difference is that we no longer have target smash or any other type of minigame within the classic mode, but there are many other new modes and features in the game to replace this.
All-Star Mode also makes a return, this time a little different, now you’ll fight against all fighters in the game in batches of 4 or 5 fighters in order in which they were introduced to the world.
Adventure mode is missing from this game, the first time absent since it’s introduction is Super Smash Bros. Melee, however, now we have a new mode taking it’s place.
Smash Run is a new mode exclusive to the 3DS version of this game, it’s gonna be familiar to those who played Kirby: Air Ride, you first go into a big area full of enemies and obstacles where your main goal is to collect as many stat badges as possible, which’ll give you a certain stat, like more powerful special moves, speed, weight, among others. Then you go into an event that’ll make use of those stats, weather it’s your speed or strength, different matches will need a different skill. You can play this mode by yourself with AI players or locally with your friends.
Playable Characters
The roster of this game is the biggest the series has seen, and certainly one of the biggest video games have ever seen. With a 51-character final roster, all with unique special attacks and customization.
An interesting feature is the introduction of Miis, which unlike any other fighter, you can name, dress, stat change, and customize all their special moves to your liking.
However, now you can also customize a little the rest of the characters, with the introduction of stat modifiers and certain special moves.
The downside to this is that you have to unlock every single move for every single character, this can be tedious at times and take you a long while.
Internet
The internet connection for this game isn’t perfect, you can’t access any other system feature that uses internet, like Friends List or Miiverse, that while you can open it, you can’t search for people on the internet.
The only internet feature in this game is of course, fighting online, there are 2 modes, from which the rest spawn, the first is “with friends”, this feature allows you to play with your friends very similar to how you play locally with them, only though the internet, which does cause some lag every now and then, but it’s understandable seeing how this game just came out and the servers might be having some issues.
The other mode is to play “With Anyone”, from which you get “For Fun” and “For Glory”. For Fun in itself has two modes, “Smash” and “Team Smash” where up to four players fight trough any stage, in this mode all items are unlocked. For Glory is a lot different, you fight only on omega mode stages, and have no items, you have 3 modes, “1-on-1”, “Smash” and “Team Smash”, all have the same restrictions.
Mini-games
While we don’t get Target Smash on Classic Mode, the game has Trophy Rush, Street Smash, Target Blast and the Return of Home-Run Contest and Multi-Man Smash.
Home-Run Constest is just like in the past, you select a character with which you’ll hit a sandbag with a bat and send it flying as far as you can.
Multi-Man Smash puts you on a fight against a certain amount of AI players or a time limit, 10-man, 100-man, 3-minute, Rival, Endless, and Cruel Smash are all featured and should bring a challenge to the more experienced fighters.
Target Blast puts you in a Angry Birds style mini-game where you’ll hit a bomb into a mountain of targets and blocks to see how much you can destroy.
From TVGamers, this game gets a:
9/10
